EMC Ramps RecoverPoint CDP With Replication

EMC has beefed up its RecoverPoint solution, enabling users to perform CDP and remote replication simultaneously on the same volume.

Based on technology from EMC's $153 million acquisition of Kashya in 2006, RecoverPoint is the vendor's flagship CDP SAN product, although its ability to perform as a CDP/replication solution was limited.

"Before, there was no CDP and remote replication running at the same time," says Doc D'Errico, vice president and general manager of infrastructure software at EMC, adding that RecoverPoint 3.0 could help firms' disaster recovery efforts.

"[Now] you have the benefits of achieving any point in time recovery at a local level, and simultaneous disaster recovery. You can have a single application that has both a local CDP copy and a remote replica."

At least one analyst thinks this feature could prove particularly useful to users at a time when they are under increasing pressure to protect their data. "It goes back to being able to recover from different types of failures," says Mike Fisch, an analyst at the Clipper Group. "For CDP, it's typically data corruption, and for replication, it's system failures and local disasters."Inability to deliver CDP with replication has been suggested as one of the reasons for the rumored demise of rival vendor Mendocino, underlining the growing importance of CDP/replication combos, which are also offered by the likes of InMage.

In addition to its replication enhancements, EMC also announced tighter RecoverPoint integration with its Clariion CX3 systems today.

Traditionally, EMC has placed RecoverPoint's "write splitting" function, which ensures that I/O operations run through their normal I/O path, as an agent running on a server or an intelligent switch.

"We now have [a RecoverPoint agent] embedded directly on Clariion, as opposed to network or host-based," says D'Errico, explaining that this can make IT managers' lives much easier by removing the need to install drivers on multiple devices.

"It can significantly reduce the complexity of deployment. You can [also] manage the replication in conjunction with the array, which is very comfortable for most storage administrators."EMC has also added support for iSCSI volumes and VMware File Systems to the Clariion-based agent, according to D'Errico. "The benefit of this is to provide CDP and replication for iSCSI, which is becoming very prevalent in the commercial environment."

EMC claims a handful of beta customers are using RecoverPoint 3.0, although only two of these, Cleveland, Ohio-based Insurance.com and hosting specialist Hosted Solutions have been made public.

Pricing for RecoverPoint 3.0, which will be available next month, starts at $60,500. An enhanced version of the SMB-focused RecoverPoint SE solution will also be available in March, priced at $20,000 per Clariion array.

EMC also took the wraps off its Disk Library for Mainframe (DLm) 4080 device today, a 190-Tbyte disk-based tape emulation product.

"It's the first fully disk-based VTL for mainframes," says D'Errico, adding that compression software can boost the library's capacity up to more than half a Pbyte. "You're eliminating the mechanical processing and the risk of shipping tapes."Pricing for the DLm 4080, which will be available in March, starts at $850,000.

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